Miz Jane is at it again
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Deoliver47
It has come to my attention that Miz Jane Hamsher is backing the formation of a “New Progressive Alliance” (NPA)
The NPA are using the photo above as part of their logo. (Ella Baker is now rolling over in her grave)
You know I don’t read her blog – and have little interest in her doings ever since her Grover Norquist, Phyllis Schlafly unholy alliance, however by serendipity yesterday I ran across a diary here which actually got me to click on a link to FiredogLake.
I thought y’all might be interested.
The blog post has a plan for the re-education of the Negro (not Carter G. Woodson's)- ummm “Afro-Americans”. The author of said diary attempted to cross post his rant here – though he didn’t seem to get much traction. In fact he collected dessert in the form of donuts.
However, you may find his premise interesting.
Warning Link to FDL
A Seriously Trouble-Making Proposal (Dear Cornel West and New Progressive Alliance)
The recent dustup due to Hedges’ article on Cornel West could be a real God send. While some of what West said was probably ill-advised, he also touched on many things that the NPA (New Progressive Alliance) could enthusiastically back him on.
The author has a plan for Cornel West. To become the black people re-educator.
Much better would be to go on the offensive, IMO. I.e., exploit this dustup (with West’s blessings, of course), to take things to a higher level. Specifically, West, with the NPA’s backing, could undertake an education program, with the initial target the US black community, of teaching them about, say, Obama’s Top 10 betrayals, and Obama’s Top 5 betrayals of Afro-Americans.
....
One of the maddening things about American politics is that people are too tribalistic, and tend to demonize their opponents across the board, unfairly. This makes opportunistic and rational cooperation on specific issues very difficult, and is thus dis-empowering for the electorate, as a whole. However, it’s just as maddening when large segments of the population are so ignorant that they can’t identify who their enemy is, on any particular issue. (This is sort of the opposite of dichotomous tribalism.) Obama is not the friend of black or white Americans when it comes to health care, and a whole lot of other stuff. It’s a shame that more black Americans don’t realize this, but this situation is rectifiable.
Yes it's really a shame that us "tribal" folks don't "get it". Obviously. Hence the need for someone who looks like us to set us straight.
But, as I said – my curiosity was piqued –and I wanted to go meet the new leaders of our tribe, who have appointed themselves. I’m always willing to be "edumacated", and “rectified”
So I went to check out this "New Progressive Alliance". Why not? I'm progressive, left of center.
New Progressive Alliance
The New Progressive Alliance (NPA) is a grassroots organization founded in 2010, entirely online, in response to the Democratic Party’s complete and final forsaking of its role as the leading voice for Progressive ideals and reform in America.
Okay let's "deconstruct" this. Or as I would prefer to say - let's break this down.
It is "grassroots". Question is whose lawn? It is entirely "online". hmmm. Not very close to any roots.
They have that big photo of the March on Washington – but don’t seem to have a clue about how that was organized and the struggles that it symbolized or the people who fought and died to get there.
I guess they didn’t get the message that "the revolution will not be blogged it will be slogged".
So curious about the leaders of this NPA (other than Hamsher) I read further.
The steering committee’s first four members were Cindy Sheehan, Dr. Jill Stein, Richard Winger and Dr. Cornel West. After its first phone conference in early February of 2011, the committee added Paul Barrow, Alan Maki, and David Swanson, and recruitment efforts will continue indefinitely to ensure the committee represents the full breadth and depth of the Progressive community.
Wow. Way to go...now just who are these people? Sorry to show how ignorant I am - but teh google is my friend.
Cindy Sheehan's name I know. Teh google turned up interesting articles about her recently and led me to her fb page where she had posted this
I am sorry, but if you believe the newest death of OBL, you're stupid. Just think to yourself--they paraded Saddam's dead sons around to prove they were dead--why do you suppose they hastily buried this version of OBL at sea? This lying, murderous Empire can only exist with your brainwashed consent--just put your flags away and THINK!
Lions and tigers and bears and CT...oh my?
Jill Stein was:
the Green-Rainbow Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and finished third in a field of five candidates, with 76,530 votes and about 3.5% of the vote
Richard Winger
Winger has been a loyal partisan of the Libertarian Party.
Winger has made only one run for public office, a 1986 campaign for Secretary of State of California on the Libertarian ballot line. As he was running for the office charged with the administration of elections, the campaign was styled as being nonpartisan, intended to represent the interests of all minor parties. Winger finished fourth among five candidates with 1.5% of the vote.
Didn't find a lot on Alan Maki except a link to a CPUSA site.
David Swanson
is the author of "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."
and last but not least Paul Barrow
was the Tennessee State Coordinator for the Kucinich for President 2008 campaign and also worked with the Kucinich campaign on the national level, organizing Meetup activities. After the 2008 election, Barrow joined with other former Kucinich campaign members to form United Progressives, where he serves as Director of Policy and Communications.
Okay – I got the picture Green Party, Libertarians, CPUSA or some new formation and anti-war activists.
Guess they decided they needed a little color, so they asked Brother Corn to sit down with them so he could guide us in the door.
I wondered who they plan on running? Poof – they gave me the answers – they took a poll. and are now advertising on Craigslist to do some hard core grassroots organizing! (I kid you not)
A process for the aggressive political organization of progressives in the US has been started called New Progressive Alliance (NPA), under the benign tolerance* of the eminent progressive blog FireDogLake. This budding organization will be looking to leverage a Democratic run for US President into rapidly growing this new organization. There has already been a poll of initial supporters of NPA to determine an ordered list of who should be invited to be the NPA approved candidate. Elizabeth Warren has won the top designation, however, like the other well-known nominees, it is currently unknown if Warren will accept. Running against a Presidential incumbent can be political suicide within a party, be that incumbent a Democrat or Republican.
However, for an NPA candidate who is fully on board with the program, committing political suicide as a Democrat is not only of no concern, but in a sense welcome. That’s because it is anticipated that any NPA approved Democrat primary candidate must, if they fail to win the Democratic Party’s nomination (as everybody expects will be the case), turn around and give their endorsement to an NPA approved progressive Presidential candidate, running under a third party, such as the Green Party, or as an independent. NPA seeks to break the stranglehold of the corrupted Democratic Party on the minds and voting behavior of the progressive electorate. Until that stranglehold is broken, being popular with Democratic Party power brokers should be viewed as undesirable for a genuine progressive, anyway.
The NPA polling, ranked in order of approval, is as follows:
1. Elizabeth Warren
2. Russ Feingold
4. Howard Dean
4. Richard Trumka
5. Alan Grayson
6. Cynthia McKinney
7. Al Franken
8. Paul Krugman
9. Dennis Kucinich
10. Jane Hamsher
(my bold) Wow - A Trojan Horse strategy! Run as a Dem - lose, then endorse our new leaders.
By the way - I saw #10 first and had to pick myself up off the floor I was laughing so hard. I have nothing against Warren and Feingold and Dean and Grayson and Trumka and Kucinich and Krugman....but they aren't gonna do it so I guess that leaves them with a Hamsher/ McKinney ticket.
Sooooooooo these folks are "the new progressives". These folks think we are an uneducated mass yearning to be freed from the yoke of Obama-love by them and led to the promised land. We obviously can’t think for ourselves – nor are we perceptive enough to form our own opinions.
Well. I think they are in for a big surprise. Someone has obviously spiked their sparkling water.
Let me tell them (if they are peeping) a little something I’ve observed about my peeps over the years. I want to talk about black folks and opinions.
I keep reading around here that "we" the supporters of POTUS are brainwashed and starstruck. That we have zero criticisms. That we aren't "critical thinkers" (guess that's why they got Corney for us)
So today I am gonna talk about black folks - I'm no expert. I just am one. So I want to share my pov.
We are opinionated. We hold as many opinions as there are African-Americans in this nation, and then some.
Black folks are contentious, cantankerous, bombastic, pugilistic and know how to hold a grudge when we think you are stabbing us in the back (I have family members who haven’t spoken to each other since Aunt Blossie’s funeral back in 1950 something).
We criticize, dissect and speechify on everything – whether or not we know what we are talkin’ about – we have an opinion. And are not quiet about it either – go into any barbershop, beauty parlor or corner bar to verify this and just listen a while. We argue on front porches, stoops and on buses on the way home from work. We argue about education, jobs, housing, crime, guns, abortion, child rearing, the military, immigration, and health care. Ask kids on the corner how they feel about stop and frisk laws?
Let’s not forget the great verbal battles at Thanksgiving dinners, and we do it at weddings and funerals too.
We are masters debaters and developed the fine art of playin’ the dozens and jonesin’.
Snap. We will cut you in a second with a witty comeback and pair you down to size.
We will fuss and cuss over politics, sports, recipes and music. And religion. Let us never forget the “head sprinklers” versus “the dunkers”. Baptists versus AME’s and let’s not get started on Jehovah Witnesses ringing your doorbell pushing copies of Awake and Watchtower.
So when I listen to folks who have lumped us all into one great big monolithic robotic tribe of worshipers at the throne of the President (hallowed be his name – thank you Jesus) I am often amused, and sometimes bemused about how little they really know ‘bout us.
Never forget the history of the Booker T vs. Dubois rifts. Or the battles between Richard Wright and Baldwin. We had MLK versus Malcolm and Malcolm versus Elijah and Farakhan and The Panthers versus Karenga ….oh we are not a monolith – ever.
We read the papers and fight about everything from the front page to the sports columns.
We listen to talk radio – but maybe not white folks talk radio – and will get on the phone and before you can say speed dial are talking about the last piece of idiocy that came outta Tavis Smiley’s mouth.
We dissect Oprah and chuckle along with Wanda Sykes – who by the way – packs the house the same way openly lesbian Jackie “Moms” Mabley used to do at the Apollo, the Uptown, the Howard, the Regal and the Royal.
We loved Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy the same way kids now love Chris Rock. Our comedians put the black in black humor.
We argue and we analyze. We have always been great talkers and preachers and speech-making rappers and some of our kids today sound like they ate a dictionary for breakfast and a thesaurus for lunch.
So these mis-informed folks who think they are gonna waltz into our hoods via cyberspace (cause you know they aren’t gonna talk this shit in real life on a real street corner) to “educate us” about why we should throw our hard earned and hard won votes which are steeped in blood and history to vote for Dennis Kucinch or a Ron Paul re-tread are in for a rude awakening.
Progressive? My ass.
Now you noticed I didn’t say any thing about Brother Cornel – the "black" leader they have picked for us to follow – the Barack “left” alternative, who I’m sure leaped to be at the head of the class or to grab a chair at the table.
We've had a number of highly contentious diaries here in the last week dealing with Brother Cornel and his side-kick Tavis.
Now I am gonna quote from a writer who for years I have loved to hate. Arch critic Stanley Crouch. For those of you who don’t know Stanley Crouch he is a brother who makes folks so mad sometimes they want to clock him. (read Amy Alexander’s piece on Stanley
In fact he got fired from the Village Voice for getting into a fist fight. But he sure can write. Jazz critic extraordinaire who never pulls punches, he’s been called everything but a child of God. I used to wait each week for his column in the Voice so I could get mad. I’d then fire off a letter (we used to write letters back in the day – this was before email and twitter and texting) He now writes at the Daily News. And before you raise an eyebrow – regular folks in NY read the Daily News not the NY Times. Yup. Regular black folks read him. Jazz and blues fan read him. Political folks read him.
He wrote:
Cornel West is an expert showman but nothing more: The lead huckster of the Ivy League's takedown
Had some kind words for Melissa Harris-Perry though.
Cut to the nitty-gritty:
Serious black intellectuals privately dismissed West many years ago as no more than an academic loudmouth with a good show business game. He has perfected a variety of poses - from academic to conciliator to rapper - that are intended to give the impression that a very substantial mind is mulling over something and will soon drop some rhetorical bombs that will blow away all nonsense.
The effect is usually the opposite: West is best at going beyond sentimentality to pure bathos. His answer to a teaspoon of unnecessary sugar is a barrel of syrup. His most faithful audience is made up of liberal white cornballs and the black cornballs who mirror them.
Now since folks in here are rarely of the same mind about things, though our discussions and disagreements are always civil, I'm throwing all this out to the porch family.
Lot's of us here on the porch have problems with things some things Obama, things Administration, things House and Senate and things state and local. Some of us actually like Brother Cornel. We've read his books.
But I'm sick and tired of hearing we are unable to determine what we think, where we are going without being led by some folks who have probably finally realized that Black folks are a huge chunk of the Democratic Party. **Side note: Real interesting that they are ignoring Latinos - I'm sure they'll find someone to "represent".
Here's my opinion.
Frankly – I am not interested in a Hamsher led New Progression to nowhere.
I’ll stick with my “old progressive” values. Organize in my communities around issues that my folks can relate to.
“Grassroots” has a meaning for me. Even if it’s only the few blades of grass that grow up in cracks in the pavement, they are the sidewalks I know. I'll pound pavements and sit and listen. I'll organize and work on building coalitions. But they won't be with this group. I'm a Democrat. A lefty Democrat who wants to see more and better and more representative Democrats in the years ahead.
I came here to Daily Kos for that reason. Now I am starting to recognize that some folks here have a different agenda. So even though that dude who posted here got HR'ed to the basement, the ideas he expressed are coming out the woodwork.
So to folks who are on his wavelength I'll say this. Y’all want to go somewhere else? More power to you.
Obama 2012.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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As far as I'm concerned there is no question, they are right wing corporate shills. Roll Call: Some Question Black Chamber of Commerce
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In the past six months the National Black Chamber of Commerce has rushed to the defense of for-profit colleges, the oil industry and the largest supplier of menthol cigarettes, all while pursuing a lawsuit against the only other national organization that represents black businesses.
The nonprofit, established in 1993 to advance the interests of black entrepreneurs, has long opposed regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. But its recent forays into the debate over government regulation of menthol cigarettes, for-profit colleges and AT&T's proposed merger with T-Mobile have raised concerns among some other African-American businessmen about the group's agenda.
Last year, the NBCC filed a suit against a new, similarly named black business group — the U.S. Black Chamber — alleging that the upstart group is trying to poach its members and identity.
The NBCC — which counts Exxon Mobile and Lorillard, the maker of minty Newport cigarettes, among its major financial supporters — acts much like other trade associations working to advance the interests of its dues-paying members, but some critics wonder how those missions actually help black businesses.
For nearly 20 years, the NBCC, led by Harry Alford and his wife, Kay DeBow, has been the only black business group in town, spending roughly $1 million every year on its activities.
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The struggle to reclaim an African burial ground in Richmond, Va., highlights a classic struggle between entrenched interests and efforts to restore the humanity of those who died in bondage. The Root: Fighting to Save African-American Cemeteries
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For more than 10 years, Richmond, Va.'s oldest municipal burial ground for people of African descent has been covered over by an active parking lot owned by Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). The dead cannot speak, so Richmond's African-American community has been fighting to remove the parking lot and protect its ancestral legacy.
Richmond, former capital of the Confederacy, was one of the largest slave trading centers in the U.S. and a place to which many African Americans can trace their roots. Dead Africans -- free and enslaved -- were buried at Richmond's African Burial Ground between about 1750 and 1814; it was known then as the "Burial Ground for Negroes." This was also the site of the execution of the famous slave rebellion leader Gabriel Prosser.
The Virginia State Legislature recently passed a bill that transfers the property from VCU to the Richmond City Council's Slave Trail Commission. It becomes law on July 1, 2011, and last Friday the university's Board of Visitors is expected to surrender the property on May 23. The university's president and the mayor of Richmond are expected to attend the turnover. Several private contractors have offered to remove the lot's asphalt, free of charge.
However, this transfer has only happened because of constant pressure on VCU and state and local legislators by Richmond's black community. The university had resisted the African-American community's appeals to shut down the parking lot since purchasing it several years ago. The school even ignored its own students' protests.
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From the "it gets better series". Colorlines: People.com Editor Janet Mock Tells Her Story: ‘I Was Born a Boy’
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How often do the stories of young trans women of color make it into the pages of mainstream women’s magazines? Rare enough that People.com editor Janet Mock’s beautiful essay in Marie Clare is an event unto itself.
Mock, a woman with “an enviable career, a supportive man, and a fabulous head of hair”—it is indeed fabulous—told Marie Clare’s Kierna Mayo about the pain and ridicule and isolation she endured before her transition. It’s a lovely, challenging piece about the long road to the day when her actual identity matched her outside appearance.
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Tia Norfleet is used to breaking barriers. She's used to being overlooked, and she well knows the low odds and risks involved. None of this matters though. Huffington Post: Tia Norfleet Tries To Become First Female, African-American NASCAR Driver
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Norfleet, 24, loves what she does and she'll stop at nothing to make it.
Racing ... is her life.
Growing up the daughter of a minister and a professional racecar driver (Bobby Norfleet), Tia was introduced to the sport at a very young age. In a predominately white, male sport, she is the exception to the rule. Female drivers are rare enough, but an African-American as well? It's never been done.
Norfleet is trying to become the first to make it into the NASCAR circuit. It's a goal she's been aiming toward for quite some time. She has been successful at drag racing and on the shorter tracks circuit known as the NASCAR late models, where she recorded two top-15 finishes, though she has not yet qualified for the longer distance tracks such as Daytona and Talladega.
"Around the age of 14 is when I really, really knew that this was what I wanted to do for a living; this was my passion,"
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African Americans have overcome many barriers for a chance to sing. A new generation of performers may have the greatest opportunities of all. The Root: A Brief History of Blacks in Opera
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People of African descent have long been involved in "classical music" -- as creators, interpreters, performers and entrepreneurs. A number of well-known black singers -- from William Warfield to Jessye Norman -- have made their mark in the rarefied world of opera. So it's no surprise that even in the age of hip-hop, young African Americans are a growing presence on opera stages around the world.
In the 1700s, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges made his fortune in the court of Louis XV. Born to a slave mother and a French noble father in the Caribbean, Saint-Georges was educated in France. As a military man -- he was an accomplished swordsman -- he commanded a regiment in the French Revolution and held the rank of colonel.
A contemporary of Haydn and Mozart, he conducted their work and composed and wrote symphonies, chamber music and operas. A onetime candidate to head the Paris Opera, he was thwarted by performers who protested that they would have to take orders from a "mulatto." Today his music has been rediscovered and is played throughout the world. The young conductor Marlon Daniel launched the International Festival de Saint-Georges this year in Guadeloupe, the land of Saint-Georges' birth.
A scene from "Treemonisha," a Scott Joplin opera (Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images)
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Each May, the wildly popular DanceAfrica in Brooklyn, N.Y., showcases the best African music, dance, film and eats from around the world. The Root: Dancing to the Diaspora Beat
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t would be hard to name a more popular summer festival than DanceAfrica. Held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) every May for 34 years, it offers topflight dance, music, films, dance classes, children's activities and a super-popular outdoor bazaar, drawing thousands of people, not only from New York City but from all over the country and the world. A joyful celebration of the arts of Africa and the Diaspora, it owes its creation and robust personality to artistic director and founder Chuck Davis, who established the Chuck Davis Dance Co. in New York in 1968 and later the African American Dance Ensemble in Durham, N.C.
"The festival is all about community," Davis told The Root. "We want to entertain, educate, celebrate and honor the ancestors. I love it when people return year after year and we hug and scream and jump with excitement in just being together. That's our spirit."
The celebration starts off with a free, opening ceremony at Weeksville Heritage Center (May 20th). The main dance performances will take place at BAM Howard Gilman Opera House May 27-30. The traditional libation rite is led by the Council of Elders, who honor those who have passed on to the ancestral grounds. From there, it travels to Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza, where the community welcomes the Santiago de Cuba-based Ballet Folklórico Cutumba, this year's visiting company, with dances by students from BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble. The center, which includes three historic structures, is on the 19th-century site of the original village of Weeksville, a thriving African-American community.
Members of the Ballet Folklórico Cutumba from Cuba
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Starring a yam monster, an HIV-positive puppet and talking drums, the Nigerian version of the famous US TV show Sesame Street is all set to hit TV screens this weekend. BBC: Nigerians set to find out how to get to Sesame Square
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There are no New York-style streets with tall blocks of flats punctuated with fire hydrants, but smaller houses with gardens surrounding a huge mango tree, lined with straw baskets.
This is Sesame Square, featuring Kami - a furry, golden, female muppet, and the energetic Zobi, a blue, male muppet, who drives a stationary yellow taxi.
The likeable Kami is five years old, and HIV-positive, in a role that is expected to help eliminate the stigma associated with the Aids virus.
Yemisi Ilo, the executive producer of the series, notes that having a character like Kami will "help educate children in a fun and lighthearted way".
"Our reality here in Nigeria is that there are hundreds of thousands of Aids orphans," she adds. "We want all children, including those with HIV, to be able to relate with the characters."
"It is by no means heavy… Kami doesn't come out saying she is HIV-positive. It's just who she is."
The square is intended to resemble a Nigerian village
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I would love to see a study on why Hollywood feels the need to kill black characters first in movies, but.... PR Newswire: Hollywood Movies With African-American Directors Have More Black Characters
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Hollywood movies directed by African-Americans are significantly more likely to include African-American characters with speaking roles than movies not directed by African-Americans, according to a report released today from USC Annenberg.
The report, "Black Characters in Popular Film: Is the Key to Diversifying Cinematic Content Held in the Hand of the Black Director?", is written by USC Annenberg's Dr. Stacy L. Smith and project administrator Marc Choueiti and includes data from their ongoing, multi-year Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative.
"One fitting extrapolation of this small study is that the race of directors may really matter," Smith said. "And one key to diversifying content would be to diversify who is at the helm."
Smith, Choueiti and teams of undergraduate researchers annually view the top 100 grossing movies released theatrically in the United States and Canada. (More than 300 students have worked on the project since its 2006 inception.) Under Choueiti's supervision, the students train for six weeks and then meticulously code the movies across more than two dozen measures.
Smith and Choueiti regularly release snapshots culled from the research. Their report about gender was released last month. This secondary analysis, "Black Characters," examines in particular the presence - or lack thereof - of African-Americans and other ethnicities in the top 100 grossing films from 2007 and 2008.
During 2008, according to Smith and Choueiti's research, five African-American directors headed up a total of six of those top 100 productions. Nearly 63 percent of the characters with speaking lines in those six films are black. In the other top 94 films from the same year, less than 11 percent of the characters with speaking lines are black.
Grouped together, numbers from the top 100 do resemble U.S. population figures, as 13.2 percent of all speaking roles coded that year went to black characters. The U.S. Census indicates 12.6 percent of the nation's population then was African-American.
In 2007, a similar number (13 percent) of overall speaking roles in the top 100 movies went to black characters, but that percentage rose to 50 percent in films with black directors. That's a lower, but still significant, ethnic differentiation compared with 2008.
Smith said the recent findings from the same data set for female characters and female directors run along the same general lines.
"It could be that a person in a position of power is advocating on behalf of their group," Smith said. "But the flip side to this is that the people responsible for green-lighting the picture may be associating black directors and female directors with 'black' storylines or 'female' storylines."
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
critique
Women Like Me
making promises they can’t keep.
For you, Grandmother, I said I would pull
each invading burr and thistle from your skin,
cut out the dizzy brittle eucalypt,
take from the ground the dark oily poison–
all to restore you happy and proud,
the whole of you transformed
and bursting into tomorrow.
But where do I cut first?
Where should I begin to pull?
Should it be the Russian thistle
down the hill where backhoes
have bitten? Or African senecio
or tumbleweed bouncing
above the wind? Or the middle finger
of my right hand? Or my left eye
or the other one? Or a slice
from the small of my back, a slab of fat
from my thigh? I am broken
as much as any native ground,
my roots tap a thousand migrations.
My daughters were never born, I am
as much the invader as the native,
as much the last day of life as the first.
I presumed you to be as bitter as me,
to tremble and rage against alien weight.
Who should blossom? Who should receive pollen?
Who should be rooted, who pruned,
who watered, who picked?
Should I feed the white-faced cattle
who wait for the death train to come
or comb the wild seeds from their tails?
Who should return across the sea
or the Bering Strait or the world before this one
or the Mother Ground? Who should go screaming
to some other planet, burn up or melt
in a distant sun? Who should be healed
and who hurt? Who should dry
under summer’s white sky, who should shrivel
at the first sign of drought? Who should be remembered?
Who should be the sterile chimera of earth and of another place,
alien with a native face,
native with an alien face?
-- Wendy Rose
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The front porch is now open for discussion. Grab a chair, a rocker, a seat on the glider, or the hammock in the corner.
if you are new - welcome.